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8 Takeaways From Harvard’s Task Force Reports
When interviewed yesterday about Professor Whitehead, the University's latest acquisition in the Philosophy department, Dr. H. M. Scheffer said that Professor Whitehead was among the first two or three philosophers alive today. "What makes him a great philosopher" said Dr. Scheffer," is that he, with Bertrand Russell, is the foremost representative of the great English empirical tradition of Locke, Benkley, Mill, and Hume, and secondly that he is keenly aware of the philosophical limitations of empiricism."
Professor Whitehead, Sc.D., L.L.D. F.R.S., received his training at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he became Senior Lecturer in Mathematics. Later he was appointed Professor of Applied Mathematics at the Imperial College in London. He became interested in comparatively new branch of knowledge, mathematical logic. He collaborated with Bertrand Russell in a four volume work on mathematical logic. Three volumes appeared before the war, and one is yet to be written. It is expected that-Professor Whitehead will complete the last volume during his five years at Harvard.
More recently Professor Whitehead has changed his opinion to a large extent and where he formerly agreed with Bernard Russell on most philosophical points, he has now many points of belief in common with Bergson who was the greatest modern Franch philosopher, and who was at the opposite extreme from Bernard Russell. Professor Whitehead no longer believes that mathematical logic will solve the major philosophical problems.
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